Sonnet 122
Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain
memory
gifts
love
writing
Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain
Full character'd with lasting memory,
Which shall above that idle rank remain
Beyond all date, even to eternity;
Or at the least, so long as brain and heart
Have faculty by nature to subsist;
Till each to razed oblivion yield his part
Of thee, thy record never can be miss'd.
That poor retention could not so much hold,
Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score;
Therefore to give them from me was I bold,
To trust those tables that receive thee more:
To keep an adjunct to remember thee
Were to import forgetfulness in me.
What It Means
The young man gave Shakespeare a writing tablet as a gift; Shakespeare gave it away. He explains: he doesn't need it. The young man's image and thoughts are so deeply inscribed in his memory that no external notebook is required. His heart is the record. Giving away the physical gift was not ingratitude but proof that he needs no physical aide-mémoire.
Context
Part of the Fair Youth sequence. The specificity of the writing tablet suggests this may have been a real incident.
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